Recently I received an email asking me to join a 30-day yoga challenge program. I did a quick search on Google for something like "30-day yoga challenge" or just "yoga challenge", and I came across a large variety of yoga challenge programs being offered. Most of these programs entail making a commitment and then practicing at your own home using a video or a tape that the originator of the program offers you. Since I am myself a firm believer in establishing an on-going regular practice, I thought about offering my own version of a similar challenge program. In this program, instead of practicing on your own at home, you will be practicing with me as a group.

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I recently received this link from a friend with the title, “Bad Karma: How Yoga Can Lead to Serious Injury – Sloppy teaching and overly competitive students are giving yoga lovers serious and scary injuries”. As you can see, the title says it all. So, the answer to the question, “can yoga practice cause injury?” is apparently “yes”.

But this begs the question – how can a practice which is considered to be a healing art and science cause physical injury? To understand the answer to this question, we have to recognize that like any other physical exercise, yoga also involves physically stretching the body in different ways. Injury occurs when we don’t pay attention to the basic safety guidelines which have been prescribed for every form of exercise.

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In an earlier post, I had talked about the ‘mindfulness yoga’ workshop at Yogaville that I attended some time ago. In one of the sessions at this workshop, we practiced what is commonly called “Yin Yoga”. In this style of yoga, the emphasis is on mindfulness while practicing the asanas which are generally held for a long duration (several minutes). So, I decided to follow this practice of long hold times in a few of my recent classes. We practiced some of the simpler poses like the forward bends, gentle back bends, some side stretches and twists and held each for about 2 to 3 minutes. The feedback has been very encouraging and most of the students seem to have enjoyed these sessions. There are a few who had some difficulty holding the poses. At the end of this post, I will provide excerpts from some of these feedback emails that I received.

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